From: "Russell Coker" <russell@coker.com.au>
While I don't think much of the way the NBN has been designed, the Liberal party has an even worse plan that will give little benefit over the current situation and most of the costs of the NBN. The above URL has a change.org petition for them to reconsider this.
I think one of the major drawbacks of a fibre to the node network is described here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Broadband_Network#Fibre_to_the_premise... Mike Quigley, CEO of NBN Co, said one of the advantages of a GPON network is the distribution hub requires no electronics. He used an example in the United States where a hub was "under water and full of mud" and it continued to function while the fire department used a high pressure hose to clean it.[5] Without electronics, the distribution hub does not require a power supply, nor a battery for power outages. In a GPON network only the local exchanges housing the fibre access nodes and the equipment on premises require a power supply. ------------------------ If Turnbull has his way, it means: hubs with electronics (optical to fibre converters) close to the house The converters need power, so it adds additional power lines and other infrastructure, and a need to shelter the electronics against every kind of weather. This will in fact increase the costs of the NBN while decreasing bandwidth and reliability. The savings argument is a dud. Recently I read a print of an IEEE paper which is coming to the same result. (sorry, cannot find a reference anymore) Only politicians without any knowledge could really argue in favour of fibre to the node in dominantly suburban Australia. Regards Peter